"There are far too many aerodynamic bandaids that are permitted to pass the current standards. Not just this particular airplane, but a whole bunch of airframes. If the basic aerodynamics won't pass without the pushers, pullers and now AOA induced changes to primary and secondary controls then a new design of the wing platform should come into play."
The way I interpret this, is that the plane should never have gotten the green light to fly.
Pilots have been pushing back hard on the narrative that this was simply pilot error.
The crux is that safety agencies never mandated training on these new systems, and new procedures weren't created with them in mind. Worse still procedures from older models of the same aircraft (such as automatic overriding of auto-trim) were removed without re-training on that either.
Lion Air had to repair the AOA sensor multiple times (replace, then flush), but a single sensor failure should not bring down an aircraft; and if the AOA sensor is that safety critical then why did Boeing put two of them instead of three (i.e. for cross-checking readings)? Either it wasn't safety critical and Lion Air's actions are reasonable, or it was and Boeing cut costs on safety.
So the justifications blaming either the pilots (who didn't get training, because safety agencies told them it wasn't needed) or maintenance (who were repairing a non-critical sensor that turns out to be safety critical) are weak.
It's a bit more complicated than that even. The 737 was originally designed for a very different mission than it's being used for right now. If you find pictures of the original 737-200s they look very different from the MAX line of today. It was built in an era when it was assumed that 707 and soon after 747 class airliners would serve the hubs and then smaller 737s would serve the small regional airports. As such the 737 was designed with VERY low ground clearance such that it could offload without a ramp and generally be serviceable at these types of low infrastructure airports, hence the lack of wheel doors, the ovoid engine inlets and the generally low stance.
Fast forward to today where airport infrastructure is much more developed and these small/medium size airliners are being pressed into front line service including intercontinental routes. The aircraft has changed drastically to accommodate these changes through the years, enough that it may be time for a clean sheet design. They've changed just about everything on the air-frame from the fuel load/cabin length/wing to the avionics to make this all work.
Now, the other side of that coin is with systems. In theory this should be fine, but obviously isn't. It's hard to differentiate bandaids from regular systems and if either fails then safety is compromised. Obviously the amount of unnecessary systems should be minimized but as time goes on more systems WILL be added to gain the rewards of automation, which is a good thing. As such, we need to educate pilots on ALL of the systems, and rigorously test them before they enter service.
Additionally, if you do as the pilots want and achieve very high aerodynamic stability through the air-frame instead of stability control systems (fly by wire essentially) it reduces the aerodynamic efficiency of the airliner, particularly with current conventional designs.
>if you do as the pilots want and achieve very high aerodynamic stability through the air-frame instead of stability control systems (fly by wire essentially) it reduces the aerodynamic efficiency of the airliner
It's crazy to me that that would be an acceptable compromise.
Trump tweeted that planes have become too complicated and that the old and simple form is much better.
His tweet sounds dumb but there is some truth in it.
As you say, planes and procedures have become very complicated. And I think there are only two options: making planes simple again which make them less efficient or let computers fly the plane and make the interface simple(r).
If you look at the rockets of SpaceX then you can say they are the extreme form of fly by wire and very instable when it comes to aerodynamics. But computers can land them within centimeters when they fall out of space.
So maybe that will be the future. Planes that are very efficient instable flying 'rockets' that are controlled by computers.
Stick pushers go all the way down to the PC12 (a single engine turboprop). Honestly there is no putting that genie back in the bottle. Getting benign stall behaviour out of a highly efficient wing is very difficult.
"the plane should never have gotten the green light to fly."
this is an overstatement. airframe fuel efficiency is a undoubtable good thing vis a vis climate change, costs, etc. Obviously they've reached a point were the aerodynamic profile of a modern, efficient airframe is difficult to control via manual pilot input alone in some scenarios. This was the case for stealth technology with fighter/bomber designs.. the B2 for example has no vertical stabilizer and would not be controllable at all without fly-by-wire. Of course pilots will lament complexity and the loss of manual input. Regardless, the FAA wanted MCAS in the 737Max. Augmenting human input in the face of instrument failure and possible human failure is an extremely hard problem and uncharted territory for the industry. Doesn't at all mean its a not a worthy goal or that the designers or regulators had ill intent or negligence.
That's not really the problem with the B737 MAX though. It's not inherently unstable like e.g. a fighter. The issue is that they had to fit the engines in front of the wings, and this will create a significant pitch-up if thrust is added abruptly, e.g. in a go-around.
To counteract this they introduced the MCAS system. They would not have needed this if they hadn't "retrofitted" big engines on an old airplane design, but instead started from scratch. The B737 MAX is not really a modern aircraft, but a heavily modded old design.
The problem here isn't that a 737 MAX style design is inherently unstable. The issue is that the larger engines really needed longer landing gear and other significant airframe changes, but due to demands from Southwest that it remain within type-certification for the 737 (to avoid the costs of pilot retraining) some unfortunate compromises were made that affected the aircraft's behavior.
You can design an aircraft just like this that won't have those characteristics. You'll just need to pay to get it certified and then airlines will have to pay to train their pilots. Instead, Southwest wanted the band-aid fix, and Boeing obliged them.
An aerodynamically sound redesign to accommodate the high bypass engines would have been just as fuel efficient as the version with confusing software band-aids.
If it is cheaper to invent something like MCAS than to properly adapt the airframe, then maybe the processes that would be used for the latter are ripe for some efficiency optimization.
When I see cockpit videos, the pilots tell each other what they do / run checklists together... Does the MCAS do the same, i.e. announce "stall risk detected, increasing stabilizer trim by 2.5 degree to xx degree"?
Reading the posts there is a lot like listenning to 'retired generals' on <insert entertainment "news" network here> who haven't seen action/training in decades talk about modern tactics, equipment, and situations as if they magically have been informed by companies/players in the field they left (hint: they haven't).
I'd rather wait for formal investigations (e.g. NTSB-style) before jumping to any conclusions.
I interpret this as an indication that the United States policy and law is run by Wall street and is corrupted. Boeing didn't want to develop a new airplane, cut costs, and doesn't want to lose money, so the FAA is not allowed to ban the plane
So this isn't just banning from airports, this is banning from their airspace? That's then more or less a total grounding of them in Europe.
As an example, Norwegian (who has 15 of them) said they weren't grounding them as late as this morning, but now they'll have no choice. They use them mainly for their medium flights between scandinavia and southern europe (Nice, Budapest, Tenerife etc). No way they can do that without flying over Germany and France. It wouldn't be very good optics if they swapped their MAX'es to domestic use to free up regular 737's for flying over the continent either.
It looks like Norwegian is already asking its 737 Max flights to return to their departing airports, at least according to this recent screenshot I found on reddit [1]
Wow. This is pretty ridiculous considering all three of these planes seem to have been closer to their destination than the origin, making it safer to just finish the planned flight.
I speculate we’ll see more airspace closures once countries give enough time to avoid stranding their nationals.
I wonder if, say, Germany, waited until its planes had to chance to land before closing their airspace, while other countries/companies, like Norwegian got caught by surprise.
A potentially interesting tidbit from Norwegian's Wikipedia page:
> Diversion to Shiraz, Iran December 2018
> A Norwegian Boeing 737 MAX suffered an unspecified technical failure over Iran in December 2018. The pilot made a precautionary landing at Shiraz Shahid Dastgheib International Airport without incident. Spare parts required to make the aircraft airworthy were not available in the world outside the United States, which has prohibited exports of technology to Iran. Two months later, the almost-brand-new aircraft remained stranded in Shiraz and subject to seizure by the Iranian government.[86]
> On 22 February 2019 the plane was ferrried from Shiraz to Stockholm as DY8921
That seems like a disincentive to buy American aircraft.
If you're a reasonably sized international airline, it seems like a reasonable possibility that you'd have to (or want to) land in a territory that the US in unfavourable toward. Why take the risk?
Austria also closed the airspace for 737 max planes, while not the largest country in Europe together with France and Germany that adds quite a bit of extra detour coming from Norway.
Indeed. Norwegian is doing this because the optics now force them to do so, not self-assessment of the risk. They, and the Norwegian Civil Aviation Authority, failed in that regard.
Do you have a reference to confirm that this was a knee-jerk/optics reaction, out of interest? (definitely curious to see how airlines/authorities are reaching these decisions)
The MCAS system and the way it was introduced sound a little like a patch, and slightly haphazard.
While training & runbooks and procedures are important, take-off is a busy time, and the Max-8 is (afaik) intended to operate very-nearly-like a standard 737, so it's not inconceivable that pilots wouldn't have time or intuitively know how to handle this situation.
Ultimately any vehicle/software/tool is going to be safest when the responsible designer makes it intuitive and reduces the possibility of failure cases rather than adding workarounds or runbooks to patch over them and/or disclaim the liability.
Anyway, it seems like it could be early to strongly assign blame or critique until we know how serious the issue is.
At least it’s not the country bound and determined to prop up the brand at all costs. If it was 2 A320s that went down, you can bet we’d be banning them instantly in the states.
> "[...]do not operate the aeroplane, except that a single non-commercial ferry flight (up to three flight cycles) may be accomplished to return the aeroplane
to a location where the expected corrective action(s) can be accomplished.".
Doesn't this just say the 737 MAX can be flown only to undergo future maintenance that'll resolve whatever the current issue is, unless another notice is posted clearing it?
At the gym today, on all the TVs, the media talking heads were crucifying the FAA for being "unsafe" or playing fast and loose with passenger safety (for not grounding the planes).
I've always held the FAA in high regard, and think they do a good job. Are they really being negligent here? Or is the media just looking for something to spark outrage?
Can anyone with more specific knowledge of aircraft safety weigh in?
Two crashes in 6 months and there's only 350 planes in existence is a pretty bad safety record that is probably on par with Tupolev.
The US can tacitly blame "third world" pilots all they want, but with 300 people dead already, I think it's important for the FAA and Boeing to say exactly what is going on, especially since the planes are in use in the USA.
There is a debate over if the plane's hardware, software, or pilots are at fault-- either the planes should be grounded or the exact protocol should be published all over for the world to know, since it is the passengers' lives at stake.
The Boeing Max 8 entered service in May 2017. Assuming a linear deployment rate, the 350 planes in service have seen an average life of 10 months. Assume 4 flights/day, that's 420,000 flights so far. 2 have gone down. A best estimate of the likelihood that a plane goes down (MLE), p = X/n = 2/420,000 = 1/210,000 ~ Binomial(n=420,000, p=P(crash)). According to the Economist [1] the likelihood your plane goes down generally is 1/5,000,000. So based on the fact that the plane crashes had similar characteristics, the Boeing Max 8 is 25X more dangerous than a regular plane.
25X is the difference between surviving a commute on a bicycle vs a car [2].
EDIT: The Economist source that estimates a plane's p(crash) is questionable, for a passenger plane. If anyone wants to dig into this further, I found this source too: http://www.baaa-acro.com/crash-archives
The FAA and Boeing need to investigate this, but you can't make such statistical inferences, since you simply don't have enough data points. There could be no more crashes for the next few years with those 350 planes.
The FAA and NTSB are very good at what they do, one of the very few examples of government services that work well together with industry, give them some time.
True randomness does not preclude clusters of events. In fact that's the nature of random events.
Not saying I think these are completely random. But since we don't even know the cause of the Ethopian crash yet, who's to say? The causes may very well be unrelated.
Both crashes happened soon after takeoff (6 and 13 minutes) and Boeing seems to think that they know where the error is (stall in high angle-of-attack) and have a fix in pipeline. FAA is taking calculated risk.
How is the FAA responsible for crashes outside of its jurisdiction? There haven’t been any 737 Max 8 crashes in the US. I can’t speak for Ethiopian, but Lion Air and Indonesia in general have a pretty bad safety record. Lion Air was removed from the EU safety blacklist in 2016. In 2013 another Lion Air 737 (not the Max 8) crashed into the ocean near Bali. Lion Air has had pilot test positive for crystal meth (2012). Lion Air has had multiple major incidents with various 737s over the past years.
The Ethiopian Air copilot only had 200 total hours of experience. In the US, you need an ATP certificate with a minimum of 1500 hours to even be a first officer.
Before we start throwing sand at the FAA, why not ask how a 200 hour pilot gets into the copilot seat of an airliner. Let’s also ask why Lion Air failed to fix a problem with the airspeed indicator. During a previous flight the day before the crash, the pilot reported a problem with the airspeed indicator and deactivated the anti-stall system. Lion Air didn’t fix the problem and the airplane crashed the next day. But that’s Boeing’s fault? Lion Air is a shit airline with a horrible safety record. Southwest Airlines uses only 737s and you can count their major incidents on one hand and their fatalities in over 47 years? Just 1.
Lion Air fatalities? Hundreds over multiple incidents. Ethiopian Air? Much safer than Lion Air, but much less safer than Southwest. Ethiopian has a fleet of 108 airplanes and Southwest has a fleet of 754, including 35 Max 8 planes — yet not a single incident despite flying an order of magnitude more frequently than those other airlines.
Air Canada has 24 8 Maxes in the air as does American. Along with Southwest, that’s hundreds of flights per day without incident, but then there is a crash with some third world Lion Air plane where maintenance is provided with proverbial duct tape and Ethiopia Air who has a student pilot as the first officer? Perhaps instead of grounding specific airplanes, we should ground specific airlines, because it’s clear than Ethiopian and Lion Air ought not be flying until they can figure out the basics such as maintenance and pilot training.
There is a long history in aviation of putting safety in front of profits. And what Boeing and the FAA have the appearance of right now is putting profits in front of safety. So you're seeing trust being burned, and other government regulators standing away from the fire to avoid their own citizen trust relationship from getting shredded in the process.
Is it fair? Maybe not all of it. But I think it's completely predictable.
"News" today is a "for profit" enterprise and they will take advantage crises and public outrage to bolster their bottom lines when the opportunity arises... it's nothing personal, it's just the nature of the beast.
Its easier for everyone to just cover their ass and err on the side of caution. If another accident happens politicians would be held accountable.
For the US its harder because they have a stake in Boeing and they don't want to damage them.
Honestly why not ground a few hundred planes just to be safe? It doesn't bother the Netherlands or Singapore. There are other aircraft, nobody is running out.
It could be an EU-USA economic war. We’ve seen the Being competition won over the A380, which had to be abandoned. Maybe any excuse to ground a Boeing airframe and incur costs to owners makes Airbus look better. It doesn’t have to be lobbying, it could be a natural inclination.
It’s mean, but I’m not surprised, given the money in the game, that Europe is acting up much faster than FAA for a Boeing airframe, and the opposite for an Airbus/DC airframe.
1) The direct comparison to the A380 is the Boeing 747 which is being phased out as well. It's not a rivalry that put either of them out, just realities of modern air travel.
2) McDonnell Douglas (maker of the DC planes) is now owned by Boeing and was an American company.
American and Southwest Airlines are still flying the Max 8/9, and are refusing refunds (Southwest/American) and charging change fees (American) for customers concerned for their safety.
I don't understand this logic. They are essentially risking their entire company over the safety of this plane. If something happens now they'll be driven to bankruptcy at record speed.
One thing to note is that both American and Southwest's 737 Max aircraft are configured differently to those flown by most other operators, with regards to the display of AOA indicators and the "AOA DISAGREE" warning light. These features are optional and the fact that they are not present on Lion Air's aircraft may have contributed to that crash.
That would mean Southwest strongly believes the lack of "AOA DISAGREE" caused the crashes, so they are safe to continue flying their fleet. If so, they should come out and say it.
Right now, 737 Max Fleet is the deadliest plane per mile that is in the air [1], by a wide margin. Maybe it's an anomaly and the rate is much lower, but by the same reasoning, it could be worse. I'm not flying on one, and my opinion of Southwest and American is at a new low.
Optional deconfliction UI for flaky angle of attack sensing? That's a indictment of the standard deliverable. Is this option free or do you have to pay for it?
...which also crashed. It was bumping because it was too long and the pilots couldn’t feel when they touched down. I think it caused 2 crashes.
Which is a lot, considering DC-9 and DC-10 are known for all sorts of crashes, including losing the same door 4 times for the same reason, each time with deaths. Ah, and who doesn’t remember the Concorde crash. Provoked by bursting a tyre on a piece lost by a DC-10. The airplane that literally falls into pieces.
I may not have this correct, but here is the FAA, a branch of our government not temporarily grounding the Max 8 - looks like the government is protecting a (mostly) US company. Flip this around and we are putting a lot of pressure on allies like Germany to not use ‘dangerous’ Chinese 5G infrastructure.
I guess it is natural for governments to promote local industries but the cynical me thinks that corporations have captured our government so they don’t act in the public interests.
According to the head of the Norwegian civil aviation authority, interviewed live on radio right now, the ban is EU-wide as of a couple of minutes ago.
Readit News
https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/safety/120514-ethiopian-7...
It all comes down to this:
"There are far too many aerodynamic bandaids that are permitted to pass the current standards. Not just this particular airplane, but a whole bunch of airframes. If the basic aerodynamics won't pass without the pushers, pullers and now AOA induced changes to primary and secondary controls then a new design of the wing platform should come into play."
The way I interpret this, is that the plane should never have gotten the green light to fly.
More info about the MCAS here: https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-safety/what-is-the-boeing...
The crux is that safety agencies never mandated training on these new systems, and new procedures weren't created with them in mind. Worse still procedures from older models of the same aircraft (such as automatic overriding of auto-trim) were removed without re-training on that either.
Lion Air had to repair the AOA sensor multiple times (replace, then flush), but a single sensor failure should not bring down an aircraft; and if the AOA sensor is that safety critical then why did Boeing put two of them instead of three (i.e. for cross-checking readings)? Either it wasn't safety critical and Lion Air's actions are reasonable, or it was and Boeing cut costs on safety.
So the justifications blaming either the pilots (who didn't get training, because safety agencies told them it wasn't needed) or maintenance (who were repairing a non-critical sensor that turns out to be safety critical) are weak.
This is an excellent point. Boeing can't have it both ways.
Deleted Comment
Fast forward to today where airport infrastructure is much more developed and these small/medium size airliners are being pressed into front line service including intercontinental routes. The aircraft has changed drastically to accommodate these changes through the years, enough that it may be time for a clean sheet design. They've changed just about everything on the air-frame from the fuel load/cabin length/wing to the avionics to make this all work.
Now, the other side of that coin is with systems. In theory this should be fine, but obviously isn't. It's hard to differentiate bandaids from regular systems and if either fails then safety is compromised. Obviously the amount of unnecessary systems should be minimized but as time goes on more systems WILL be added to gain the rewards of automation, which is a good thing. As such, we need to educate pilots on ALL of the systems, and rigorously test them before they enter service.
Additionally, if you do as the pilots want and achieve very high aerodynamic stability through the air-frame instead of stability control systems (fly by wire essentially) it reduces the aerodynamic efficiency of the airliner, particularly with current conventional designs.
It's crazy to me that that would be an acceptable compromise.
The original design of the 737 did not have ovoid inlets.
You can see regular circular nacelle inlets on the 737-100:
https://secure.boeingimages.com/archive/Boeing-737-100-2JRSX...
and on the 737-200 here:
https://secure.boeingimages.com/Assets/V2/jrZYYwCXohU1rDmk4e...
The ovoid inlet design was introduced with the 737-300, when the engine was changed to the CFM56.
His tweet sounds dumb but there is some truth in it.
As you say, planes and procedures have become very complicated. And I think there are only two options: making planes simple again which make them less efficient or let computers fly the plane and make the interface simple(r).
If you look at the rockets of SpaceX then you can say they are the extreme form of fly by wire and very instable when it comes to aerodynamics. But computers can land them within centimeters when they fall out of space.
So maybe that will be the future. Planes that are very efficient instable flying 'rockets' that are controlled by computers.
The wings need to be swept for efficient travel much over Mach 0.6 and these aero aids are needed for swept wings.
At this point, pushers and shakers are well-accepted fixes for aero that is not inherently recoverable.
this is an overstatement. airframe fuel efficiency is a undoubtable good thing vis a vis climate change, costs, etc. Obviously they've reached a point were the aerodynamic profile of a modern, efficient airframe is difficult to control via manual pilot input alone in some scenarios. This was the case for stealth technology with fighter/bomber designs.. the B2 for example has no vertical stabilizer and would not be controllable at all without fly-by-wire. Of course pilots will lament complexity and the loss of manual input. Regardless, the FAA wanted MCAS in the 737Max. Augmenting human input in the face of instrument failure and possible human failure is an extremely hard problem and uncharted territory for the industry. Doesn't at all mean its a not a worthy goal or that the designers or regulators had ill intent or negligence.
To counteract this they introduced the MCAS system. They would not have needed this if they hadn't "retrofitted" big engines on an old airplane design, but instead started from scratch. The B737 MAX is not really a modern aircraft, but a heavily modded old design.
You can design an aircraft just like this that won't have those characteristics. You'll just need to pay to get it certified and then airlines will have to pay to train their pilots. Instead, Southwest wanted the band-aid fix, and Boeing obliged them.
If it is cheaper to invent something like MCAS than to properly adapt the airframe, then maybe the processes that would be used for the latter are ripe for some efficiency optimization.
Deleted Comment
I'd rather wait for formal investigations (e.g. NTSB-style) before jumping to any conclusions.
Dead Comment
As an example, Norwegian (who has 15 of them) said they weren't grounding them as late as this morning, but now they'll have no choice. They use them mainly for their medium flights between scandinavia and southern europe (Nice, Budapest, Tenerife etc). No way they can do that without flying over Germany and France. It wouldn't be very good optics if they swapped their MAX'es to domestic use to free up regular 737's for flying over the continent either.
[1] https://i.redd.it/6gtecemacpl21.png
Edit: Two are Turkish, only one is Norwegian
I wonder if, say, Germany, waited until its planes had to chance to land before closing their airspace, while other countries/companies, like Norwegian got caught by surprise.
Convenience over safety?
Total speculation on my part.
> Diversion to Shiraz, Iran December 2018
> A Norwegian Boeing 737 MAX suffered an unspecified technical failure over Iran in December 2018. The pilot made a precautionary landing at Shiraz Shahid Dastgheib International Airport without incident. Spare parts required to make the aircraft airworthy were not available in the world outside the United States, which has prohibited exports of technology to Iran. Two months later, the almost-brand-new aircraft remained stranded in Shiraz and subject to seizure by the Iranian government.[86]
> On 22 February 2019 the plane was ferrried from Shiraz to Stockholm as DY8921
If you're a reasonably sized international airline, it seems like a reasonable possibility that you'd have to (or want to) land in a territory that the US in unfavourable toward. Why take the risk?
Deleted Comment
The MCAS system and the way it was introduced sound a little like a patch, and slightly haphazard.
While training & runbooks and procedures are important, take-off is a busy time, and the Max-8 is (afaik) intended to operate very-nearly-like a standard 737, so it's not inconceivable that pilots wouldn't have time or intuitively know how to handle this situation.
Ultimately any vehicle/software/tool is going to be safest when the responsible designer makes it intuitive and reduces the possibility of failure cases rather than adding workarounds or runbooks to patch over them and/or disclaim the liability.
Anyway, it seems like it could be early to strongly assign blame or critique until we know how serious the issue is.
https://www.easa.europa.eu/newsroom-and-events/press-release...
In particular, ferry flights are allowed with certain limitations.
> "[...]do not operate the aeroplane, except that a single non-commercial ferry flight (up to three flight cycles) may be accomplished to return the aeroplane to a location where the expected corrective action(s) can be accomplished.".
Doesn't this just say the 737 MAX can be flown only to undergo future maintenance that'll resolve whatever the current issue is, unless another notice is posted clearing it?
Dead Comment
I've always held the FAA in high regard, and think they do a good job. Are they really being negligent here? Or is the media just looking for something to spark outrage?
Can anyone with more specific knowledge of aircraft safety weigh in?
The US can tacitly blame "third world" pilots all they want, but with 300 people dead already, I think it's important for the FAA and Boeing to say exactly what is going on, especially since the planes are in use in the USA.
There is a debate over if the plane's hardware, software, or pilots are at fault-- either the planes should be grounded or the exact protocol should be published all over for the world to know, since it is the passengers' lives at stake.
[1 https://www.economist.com/gulliver/2015/01/29/a-crash-course...].
[2 https://www.riskcomm.com/visualaids/riskscale/datasources.ph...].
EDIT: The Economist source that estimates a plane's p(crash) is questionable, for a passenger plane. If anyone wants to dig into this further, I found this source too: http://www.baaa-acro.com/crash-archives
The FAA and NTSB are very good at what they do, one of the very few examples of government services that work well together with industry, give them some time.
Not saying I think these are completely random. But since we don't even know the cause of the Ethopian crash yet, who's to say? The causes may very well be unrelated.
Deleted Comment
Deleted Comment
The Ethiopian Air copilot only had 200 total hours of experience. In the US, you need an ATP certificate with a minimum of 1500 hours to even be a first officer.
Before we start throwing sand at the FAA, why not ask how a 200 hour pilot gets into the copilot seat of an airliner. Let’s also ask why Lion Air failed to fix a problem with the airspeed indicator. During a previous flight the day before the crash, the pilot reported a problem with the airspeed indicator and deactivated the anti-stall system. Lion Air didn’t fix the problem and the airplane crashed the next day. But that’s Boeing’s fault? Lion Air is a shit airline with a horrible safety record. Southwest Airlines uses only 737s and you can count their major incidents on one hand and their fatalities in over 47 years? Just 1.
Lion Air fatalities? Hundreds over multiple incidents. Ethiopian Air? Much safer than Lion Air, but much less safer than Southwest. Ethiopian has a fleet of 108 airplanes and Southwest has a fleet of 754, including 35 Max 8 planes — yet not a single incident despite flying an order of magnitude more frequently than those other airlines.
Air Canada has 24 8 Maxes in the air as does American. Along with Southwest, that’s hundreds of flights per day without incident, but then there is a crash with some third world Lion Air plane where maintenance is provided with proverbial duct tape and Ethiopia Air who has a student pilot as the first officer? Perhaps instead of grounding specific airplanes, we should ground specific airlines, because it’s clear than Ethiopian and Lion Air ought not be flying until they can figure out the basics such as maintenance and pilot training.
Is it fair? Maybe not all of it. But I think it's completely predictable.
Hasn't news always been for-profit? If not: which news organizations (newspapers, magazines, wire services) have been run on a non-profit basis?
The only recent change (IMHO) has been higher time-to-market pressures (minutes versus hours/days).
Honestly why not ground a few hundred planes just to be safe? It doesn't bother the Netherlands or Singapore. There are other aircraft, nobody is running out.
Dead Comment
It’s mean, but I’m not surprised, given the money in the game, that Europe is acting up much faster than FAA for a Boeing airframe, and the opposite for an Airbus/DC airframe.
2) McDonnell Douglas (maker of the DC planes) is now owned by Boeing and was an American company.
I don't understand this logic. They are essentially risking their entire company over the safety of this plane. If something happens now they'll be driven to bankruptcy at record speed.
https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-safety/southwest-airlines...
Right now, 737 Max Fleet is the deadliest plane per mile that is in the air [1], by a wide margin. Maybe it's an anomaly and the rate is much lower, but by the same reasoning, it could be worse. I'm not flying on one, and my opinion of Southwest and American is at a new low.
1. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-boeing-737-max-is-now-the...
Is southwest refusing refunds? Not doubting you, just asking if there has been a story about it.
I hate to say it, but given the track record for appalling incidents happening with airlines in the US, I'll buy that dip.
But all that profit, would someone think of stock holders please!?
No wonder McDonald Douglas changed the DC-10 into the MD-11.
Which is a lot, considering DC-9 and DC-10 are known for all sorts of crashes, including losing the same door 4 times for the same reason, each time with deaths. Ah, and who doesn’t remember the Concorde crash. Provoked by bursting a tyre on a piece lost by a DC-10. The airplane that literally falls into pieces.
I guess it is natural for governments to promote local industries but the cynical me thinks that corporations have captured our government so they don’t act in the public interests.